"Do you want your followers or not, sire?" said she.
"Do I want them? what a question! What should I do without them, and reduced to my own resources?"
"Well, sire, the king wishes to detach your best servants from you."
"I defy him."
"Bravo, sire!" said Chicot.
"Yes," said Henri, with that apparent candor, with which to the end of his life he deceived people, "for my followers are attached to me through love, and not through interest; I have nothing to give them."
"You give them all your heart and your faith, sire; it is the best return a king can make his friends."
"Yes, ma mie, I shall not fail to do so till I find that they do not merit it."
"Well, sire, they wish to make you believe that they do not."
"Ah! but how?"